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Thursday, March 22, 2018

Institutions And Incursions

The dark side of attempting to bypass a fortified position in the hope of striking the enemy in his vitals is that the bypassed fortress might emit troops that can threaten your rear. This is merely one case of the Evil Overlord maxim: “Never leave a live enemy behind you.”

Angered by word of the disciplining of two Lacey High School students for a gun-related social media post, 200 parents, community members and other supporters of the Second Amendment on Monday let the Board of Education know they don't want the district trampling on their rights or meddling in their home lives.

"You guys are reaching into our private life, the private life of our children," said one parent, Lewis Fiordimondo, who has twins in pre-kindergarten and a daughter at the high school. "It's not your place. It's not the school's place."

Another dad, Frank Horvath, whose son is a senior at Lacey High, put things in blunter terms.

"It's none of your damn business what our children do outside of school," Horvath told the seven board members toward the end of a four-hour meeting, most of it occupied by speaker after speaker venting anger and frustration at school officials largely unable to respond due to confidentiality rules.

The unusually large turnout for Monday night's board meeting in the high school auditorium was prompted by a five-day in-school suspension of two senior boys after one of them posted a photo of themselves with guns at a local shooting range, away from school property and not during school hours.

The parental reaction is most gratifying. Indeed, had the outraged parents descended bodily upon the school, hauled the administrators out by their necks, and hanged them from the most convenient lampposts, I’d have applauded even more enthusiastically. It would have been no more than they deserved for what they’d attempted to do.

What they were attempting to do, you see, is congruent with the various “school walkouts” to “protest gun violence.” That the subject was the right to keep and bear arms is secondary.

The “public” schools no longer have education for their primary purpose...or any lesser purpose. Indeed, even indoctrination takes a back seat to their paramount mission. That mission is so greatly at odds with any and all conceptions of “school” that it must be stated in large font:

The “public” schools’ first and foremost aim is the exercise of police powers over the lives of American children.

Before tweaking the language in the high school's student handbook, the policy said "any student who is reported to be in possession of a weapon of any type for any reason or purpose whether on or off school grounds," would be subject to penalties including up to a one-year suspension.

It now omits any mention of possessing a weapon off school grounds and doesn't mention a specific suspension length. It also includes a note on buses.

I added the emphasis. Give it a moment’s thought before you continue on.

I was once an advocate of merely bypassing the Left-conquered institutions – the educational establishments, the news media, and the entertainment complex – that have done so much damage to American life. In particular, I believed that emptying the “public” schools via private alternatives and homeschooling was the best way to neutralize their pernicious effects. The above incident, coupled to the “gun violence protests” that appear to have occurred across the length and breadth of the nation, has changed my mind.

The “gun violence protests,” you see, were mandatory de facto. A cosmetic alternative of “opting out” was offered to students who disagreed, but those students, in every case that I know of, were herded into special rooms for the duration of the “protest.” In a stroke, they were ostracized, marginalized, and denied the learning opportunities their parents had paid for. They were not allowed to mount a counter-protest in support of the right to keep and bear arms.

You may rest assured that their names were recorded for their brass in refusing to join the anti-gun “protests.”

So we have a coercively funded institution with national scope that has been fully conquered by the Left and is striving to exercise legislative, police, and judicial powers over American students – and by extension, over their parents. Moreover, I would posit that the reaction by the New Jersey parents cited above is atypical – that the usual response to an event such as the suspension of the Lacey Two is “What’s the use?” or “You can’t fight City Hall.” I’d like to be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am.

The “public” schools must be destroyed. They must be ripped from the fabric of our communities. Their employees must be fired with prejudice: i.e., they must be excluded from any position in which they could repeat their crimes. Their physical facilities must be sold to private parties. No successor institution that shares their coercive powers can be tolerated.

You might be asking why I consider that necessary. It’s quite simple: the “public” schools, and their ever-escalating exactions via taxation, are the major reason for the dwindling of private alternatives. Vanishingly few families can afford to pay school taxes, about which they have no choice, and the tuition at a private school as well. Moreover, the “educators’ unions” are aware of this. It’s part of the reason they demand ever more of our money. As for the few brave American families that opt for homeschooling, they’re under increasing legal pressure intended to make their choice effectively impossible, whether by expense or through intrusive monitoring that inherently makes the home school an extension of the “public” school.

1 comment:

I support your solution. Or, as Vin Suprynowicz put it (IIRC), "Government schools should be razed to the ground so not one brick is left standing on another, and the grounds sown with salt."

However I would like to say that, short of that goal, the main thing is to GET YOUR KIDS OUT. Unlike razing government schools, no lobbying or political agitation is required. It is something any parent can do at any time without anybody else's permission.

Yes, there have been efforts to short-circuit homeschooling and make it difficult, from the very beginning. After all, homeschoolers are opposed by the most powerful special interest in every state. Yet homeschooling has progressed in the face of such opposition. Parents really, really hate government running and ruining their family, strange to say. Anyway the efforts of the teachers union usually have the effect of simply driving the homeschoolers into noncompliance. I homeschooled my son without bothering to register with the state, and many states have large and feisty noncompliant populations.